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2010-03-30

Let me give you a real case scenario. (I am not saying that any of the implementations in this example are best practice)

Default rack that was installed was a 42U rack.

Each rack was populated with no more than 16 Servers. (This was the most that they were willing to lose in the case of losing a full rack and also due to cooling issues per rack they were leaving 1U empty between each server).

Each rack has a 16 port LCD KVM keyboard tray (1 for each server).

Each rack has 24 1Gb Ports and also a 48port 10/100mb for backup network and management ports.

Up until now each Server by default had 1 NIC connected to a 1Gb port and the backup to the 100mb port - which left them with 16/24 1Gb ports populated.

Enter ESX.

Each ESX server has by default 6 NICS

vmnic0 + vmnic5 - SC + Vmotion

vmnic1 + vmnic3 - Iscsi/NFS storage

vmnc2 + vmnic4 - VM network traffic

Out of the 16 servers in each rack 2 ESX servers in a rack (the most they would risk is two hosts per rack)

Quick math again.

2 ESX hosts x 6 ports = 12 (All port have to be 1Gb)

OK 14 more servers in the rack - but one sec, there are only 12 ports free - which means that you can only put in 12 more servers.

The options were:

Run more 1GB cables to the Network Infrastructure - more switch ports which meant additional cost

Reduce the number of servers per rack to 14 servers per rack (not 16) - which meant 2 KVM ports were wasted and more empty U's in each rack.

Run some production servers not on 1Gb infrastructure

Deploy 10Gbe - cost for 10Gbe NICS and modules for the Backbone infrastructure

What happened here? The racks were cabled several years ago - before Virtualization was something that they had in their datacenter - and they had what they thought more than enough place to grow in their network ports, and they did until they started to put in ESX servers with 6 NIC's each.

Of course all of the options above have a cost with them - be it a cost that you have to lay out immediately or cost of not utilizing the resources they had to the full extent (rack space + KVM).

What was decided in the end, you may ask - well I do not have a definitive answer to that yet - because it is still under deliberation - as to which option they will choose.

What can you learn from this experience?

You should review you datacenter infrastructure at regular intervals. What was suitable for you 2 years ago is not necessarily the same today.

Bringing in a new technology will definitely have some benefits - but it will also have its caveats as well.

Virtualization is not only something that touches one aspect of your infrastructure (be it your initial savings on costs of Hardware / Operating System Licensing) it affects everything:

2010-03-28

P2V a machine - who does not want to get rid of all their physical machines to get the rid of the old hardware? If so raise you hand!

So now that we have that out the way - P2V'ing a Windows 2000 Operating System is not always as straight forward as a the other operating systems.

Take into account the following scenario. you have a Windows 2000 SP6 Server running a customized app. You start the Convert process, either using Converter Standalone - or the Guided consolation plug-in. You let the process run - and anything from 45minutes to hours later - you have a new VM registered in you virtual infrastructure.

(Note: The vmscsi service registry key may not exist if VMware Tools is not installed on the virtual machine.)

Import the registry keys onto your source machine.

Restart the source to complete installation.

Perform another conversion with VMware Converter.

Now will this be needed every time? No! I have performed many a P2V on all of the above Operating Systems - without any problems at all and without injecting the registry keys beforehand. But for the case that the conversion will fail - this should help you out immensely.

Personally - I would make this best practice and inject the drivers in by default.

2010-03-22

I was one of a few blogger that were invited to participate yesterday in a Bloggers briefing - given by Doug Hazelman - presenting Veeam's new product Surebackup.

Well this is not actually a new product as such - but a family of the current technologies that Veeam use with the addition of one significant new feature that will be introduced in Q3 of 2010 in Backup and Replication v5.

Some of the points that were shown at the briefing - which I am sure will be public as well after the announcement.

One of the biggest issues Administrators have with verifying the validity of Backups of an OS is that when doing this you cannot only rely on the restore only of one restored system.

Let me give you an example:

Verify an Exchange Backup. For this you will need Exchange, DNS, Active directory , which means we are not talking only about one system, but multiple systems. The same would go for almost any Web application restore as well.

Now in the case of the Exchange backup, the restore will entail not only multiple Operating Systems, but also having to isolate these machines from the production Network.

So as you can see - we all have a problem with attesting to the reliability of the backups that we take - will they actually work when push come to shove? It is not a definite answer - one way or the other.

So how will SureBackup help us out? With the new technology - you will be able to to verify the backups of your VM's . How will this be done? The VM's can be brought up in a fenced environment (isolated) and they can be "packaged" as a vApp to come up as a group. But even more so - you will be able to run these VM's from the compressed backup files - without even having to inflate them. One thing that all participants were amazed about was the information below

And a slide to give a bit more info about the process and something to think about the future

Some other points to note:

The restore can be done on existing ESX hosts - no extra licenses are needed.

The restore and verification can be done directly to your DR site - because it will be on an NFS store that can be mounted (of course this will be automated to say you loads of time)

This will not be a replacement for SRM

I for one will be looking forward to the Beta for the Product when it is released - this will be an interesting one!

2010-03-19

I was asked to day at work, "What would be the quickest way to add all of the members of a Distribution Group to a Security Group?", the reason of course being because you cannot assign permissions to a Distribution group.

2010-03-16

As usual looking for this list of which ports need to be punched through the firewall in order allow all kinds of services to work correctly.

Well today – I tried to scan a host for (that is behind a firewall) and vCenter failed with this error message:

Now since I knew that this was behind a firewall and only the needed ports are opened (the way it should be) I knew that it was a firewall problem, also because scanning other hosts (not behind this firewall) worked fine.

So after looking at the logs on the firewall it showed that the communications were being dropped ESX –> vCenter on port 9084 vCenter –> ESX on port 5989

Opening up the ports allowed for the Scan and Remediation to complete successfully

Now of course looking for the list of ports needed to be opened for proper communication on Google – two links came to mind..

2010-03-08

As IT organizations continue to virtualize increasing proportions of their datacenters, the virtualization of servers running custom Java applications is becoming increasingly common. Building and running custom Java Spring applications on an application server that is ideally suited for usage in a virtual environment is a critical step in extending the operational efficiencies of virtualization to a greater proportion of server workloads. With its lightweight footprint that allows for higher application server density in a virtual machine and tight integration with the Spring application framework, tc Server Spring Edition 2.0 is the best application server to run Spring applications and ideally suited for a virtual environment.

Spring on VMware Promotion

Build your applications to be run in a virtual environment with SpringSource tc Server Spring Edition 2.0 – free with the Spring on VMware Promotion.

To help you get started, VMware is pleased to announce the “Spring on VMware Promotion”. Under this promotion, all customer orders fulfilled between March 8th 2010 and May 8th 2010 that include products (license only) from the vSphere, vCenter, View or ThinApp product family will receive 2 perpetual, production-use CPU licenses of tc Server Spring Edition 2.0 and 60 days of Evaluation Support for SpringSource (collectively referred to as the “Spring on VMware Bundle”). Key Terms and Conditions include:

60-days of Evaluation Support for SpringSource (60-days of web-only support) included for no additional charge as part of promotion. After the 60-days of Evaluation Support for SpringSource, customers may purchase VMware Basic or Production Support at the then-current list price.

Start date for the Evaluation Support for SpringSource will be the date on which the promotion codes are sent to the customer.

One (1) Spring on VMware Bundle fulfilled per order, not to exceed one (1) per customer during the promotional period.

Prices for eligible products may vary if purchased through resellers or in different regions. Please contact your authorized VMware reseller for pricing information.

This promotion is available to all customers who make a qualifying purchase from a VMware authorized reselling partner, from the VMware website or directly from VMware. Exception: This promotion is not available for OEM partners ordering directly from VMware. Check with your VMware authorized reselling partner for promotion eligibility.

Customers will receive their promotion code for the Spring on VMware Bundle on or before May 10, 2010. Promotion codes must be redeemed within 60 days from the day they are sent to the customer.

Eligible Products

Promotion Duration

Eligible Product Purchases from March 8, 2010 – May 8, 2010. Customers will receive their promotion code for the Spring on VMware Bundle on or before May 10, 2010. Promotion codes must be redeemed within 60 days from the day they are sent to the customer.

Promotion Availability

This promotion is available to all customers who make a qualifying purchase from a VMware authorized reselling partner, from the VMware website or directly from VMware. Exception: This promotion is not available for OEM partners ordering directly from VMware. Check with your VMware authorized reselling partner for promotion eligibility.

Terms and Conditions

60 days of Evaluation Support for SpringSource included for no additional charge as part of promotion. After the 60-days of Evaluation Support for SpringSource, customers may purchase VMware Basic or Production Support at the then-current list price.

Start date for the Evaluation Support for SpringSource will be the date on which the promotion codes are sent to the customer.

One (1) Spring on VMware Bundle fulfilled per order, not to exceed one (1) per customer during the promotional period.

Prices for eligible products may vary if purchased through resellers or in different regions. Please contact your authorized VMware reseller for pricing information.

Promotion offer not available for purchases by OEM partners ordering directly from VMware.

Customers will receive their promotion code for the Spring on VMware Bundle on or before May 10, 2010. Promotion codes must be redeemed within 60 days from the day they are sent to the customer.

Something that I do every now and again (almost every day - many times per day) is to connect to the Event Viewer / Computer Management / Services console of a Remote Windows machine for troubleshooting purposes.

Now of course you could do it like this:

Start -> Run -> compmgmt.msc

Right-Click -> Connect to another computer -> <Computer_Name> -> OK

or you could make it even shorter

Start -> Run -> compmgmt.msc /computer:<Computer_Name>

But after spending some time reading about Powershell today, I decided since I have a Powershell prompt open the whole time would it not be easier to do it in Powershell as well? And maybe also do it one command with switches?

2010-03-05

Recently we had a planned maintenance window that required shutting down power to the entire building. As part of the procedure we created snapshots of each VM before the powerdown. With PowerCLI this is really easy

First I I relied on the same $snaps variable as in the previous example to get all the relevant snapshots

I then ran through a loop from $i=0 until the number of snapshots and removed the snapshot

I then continue the loop and retrieve the number of running "RemoveSnapshot" tasks. As long as there are more than 4 - then the script will sleep, once there are less than 4 it will increment $i by 1 and will continue to remove the next snapshot.

2010-03-04

Because I have seen two such posts in almost as many days here and here - dealing with installation of vCenter Server on Windows 2008 R2 (which of course is 64-bit only) I feel it is important to point out that this is not a good idea and to bring your attention to the vSphere Compatibility Matrix - pg.18.

vCenter is not supported (as of today) running on Windows 2008 R2!!!!!!!!!!!

Will it work on Windows 2008 R2? -- Yes!!

Does vSphere client run on Windows 2008 R2? -- Yes!!

Does Update Manager run on Windows 2008 R2?? -- Yes!!

Are you willing to risk the fact that your infrastructure is running on an unsupported platform - and if you run into a problem that is OS related - you are on your own?? I for sure am not!!For a test Environment or a lab - sure no problem - why not. But I would not do it (and refused) for my Production Infrastructure.

Until VMware updates the above document - I would strongly advise that if you want to install vCenter on Windows 2008 - do so on Windows 2008 64-bit SP2 - that way you can still upgrade to R2 when the OS becomes officially supported.

Personally I think it it is a technicality that the QC process was not completed on Windows 2008 R2 before the release of 4.0 Update 1 - and it will be just a matter of time until it is added in ….